I'm not a performing monkey. Well, not all the time.

I need to take pictures of our Christmas decorations, this is the best time of year :)
For now:

Too cold to swing?! It's never too cold to swing!

She watches a Signing Time video (which is supposed to help teach/reinforce sign language) once a day. Yesterday her gate was open and I think she was worried that I would trap her if she wandered into the gated area. So she watched her video from wayyyy across the living room.



Maya loves her new chair, passed on from cousins Collin & Emerson. She climbs right up, but needs to practice getting down gracefully:

If you are here because you recently got our holiday card---fess up. Did you understand it? We've had a shocking number of people (more than 0) say:

"Oh, your card was cute! It was funny that you put 3 crying pictures . . ."

and then I have to say

"Yeah, because the inside is that song lyric, you know 'it's the most wonderful time of the year' . . . get it? Like she cries all of the other parts of the year except for now?"

(pause)

"OHhhhhh . . . I get it"

Sigh. I thought it was fairly obvious. Maybe next year we'll have to do a test audience. Or include a back that explains the card :) I have to update on Maya's new tricks, but for now here are a few pictures. Oh, and we're getting our tree tonight!!!!!!!!!!!!!! December is the best :)


Working hard:



Hardly working:


Just hanging:

Results in!

Surprise! The results came in already, and everything is totally normal---no brain abnormalities!

Hooray :) And Happy Thanksgiving :)

MRI Done

Thanks for all of the thoughts, prayers, and well wishes. The MRI is done, the stuffing is in the oven, and we're looking forward to Thanksgiving :)

We got to the hospital a little before 7:30am, and Maya (who had not eaten or drank since 7:30pm last night) was miraculously not cranky. Dave played with her while I filled out paperwork and then we broke out his laptop and played "Signing Times" (her sign language dvd). She watched it until it was time to go in. Dave took her back while they put her under, and then we went downstairs and read in the cafe for a bit. 40 minutes later we went upstairs just as she was waking up. She whined/cried a little, but was mostly just tired. Drank a bottle, filled out another form, and we were on our way home (a little after 10).

She's been fine, slightly sleepy but really no big deal. The nurses commented that she was very easy---some kids really scream I guess.

So that's it---I'm not expecting to hear anything from the doctor before next week.

MRI tomorrow

I know, I need to update more. Having said that . . . (that's a nod to this week's Curb Your Enthusiasm, if you watched it)

Tomorrow Maya has an MRI in the city in the morning. It's scheduled for 8:30am, requires an hour or two of sedation (with no eating/drinking beforehand, sigh), and is a little stressful. If you remember back to her adenoid surgery, coming out of the anesthesia was rough . . . we're hoping that things will be easier this time around.

Keep us in your thoughts tomorrow. I'll update when we're home.

I'm working on an update, but my time gets stolen away really easily. One week of not updating and there's so much to add that it becomes too big of a job, so I procrastinate and it gets bigger, etc etc. I just uploaded a bunch of pictures, so now I need to sort and organize them and then I can update with pics.

I had Maya's IFSP meeting this week (where we look at her progress and determine her thearpies for the next 6 months). We're increasing everything, so now we'll get PT for 120 mins a week (up from 60), OT for 120 mins (up from 90), Speech & Feeding for 120 mins (up from 60), and we'll get evaluated by a special instructor (who I think will work on things like pointing, reading, clapping, etc). I'm sure she'll qualify for that too. I'm working on the new schedule but it's hard to coordinate the schedules of 3 therapists and us, too. And Maya seems to be switching from 2 naps per day to 1, so I'm not sure how that will factor in as well.

For now, I'll leave you with the best picture that I think I've taken this month. This was at the park----Maya was holding a coin for the piggy bank and I asked her to give it to me (which she did). Then I put the coin in the bank, instead of handing it back to her, and this is what happened:

MOMMY! I can NOT BELIEVE that you just fed my coin to the PIGGY instead of giving it back to ME! I am so MAD! MAD! MAD! MAD! I'm just going to sit here and cry :(

Things I do, 2 awesome updates

My life in pictures:

I'm a great eater of baby foods :) This is one week's worth of jars (M-Sun), plus I eat a lot of yogurt and mashed potatoes! I'm struggling to progress to thicker textures, but we're working on it.

I go to the park! At the park, we do physical therapy-ish exercises, crawl around, climb on stuff, and swing!
My pants get super dirty from crawling around. Everyone else at the playground can walk, so I look ridiculous in my constantly blackened pants. Mommy wonders if people think that she doesn't wash my clothes.I'm figuring out how to climb and chase the big kids!

A few times a week, I go swimming :)

And when I wake up from my nap, I like to turn on the mobile and gather my book, baby, and bunny all together:

I like to sit in my giant egg. Ok, just kidding, these are from a trip to Central Park Zoo that I took with Mom & Grandma. I love the penguins and the petting zoo!





And every day ends with a fun bath with my daddy. He's the best bath giver in the world. Then I get all wrapped up like a little flower.

And . . . . DRUMROLL, please . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 giant milestones this week! On Thursday, I babbled my first consonant babbles. I now say "Mamamamamamama" whenever I'm tired or agitated :) It's super cute and mom & dad are psyched that I'm making more noises.

AND this morning I stood up----all by myself!!! All of a sudden mom & dad looked over and saw this:

I'm getting big & strong :)

Amazing gym cushions!

So when my sister saw my amazing taped-together platform it apparently caused her to research real toddler gym cushions, as if my taped creation was somehow inferior (jk, Lisa :) ). But for real, she sent me some links to toddler gym stuff, which is really cool and really expensive. I decided to look for used stuff, and in a crazy twist of fate (or divine intervention) someone had actually posted 3 cushions for sale earlier that day! Last night after Maya was asleep I drove downtown to pick them up, and today Maya got to play with one of them (we got 3). Big shoutout from Maya to my parents, who bought them for her!

(Still in her pjs) Mom! What's this?!

I can play with it like THIS:

I can play with it like THIS:

Get out of my way!

I can even play with it like this (although it didn't seem like that much fun today):

PS: If you notice, in pictures 1,2 & 4 she is carrying around 3 little rings hookecd together. I don't know why, but she didn't want to put them down this morning. Really cute :)

PPS: Although it looks like she's rocking out, I actually can only leave her unattended when it's shaped like a tunnel (pics 3 & 4) because if she has to climb down from it (like pic 1 &2) she kind of face plants.

PPPS: It's so much more fun to think about our Mommy & Maya physical therapy-ish time now that we have great tools to make it easier! (And you guys haven't even seen the other 2 cushions yet!)

Non apple picking

Today we went apple picking. However, we didn't pick any apples because the line was huge to get on the hayride to get up to the trees:

So instead, we played in the pumpkin patch:

And they had a petting zoo, where Maya enjoyed giggling at many animals:

While we were there, a chicken was cooking at home in the crockpot. For those interested in the prolific chicken recipes, I'm going to talk chicken . . . if you don't care about chicken, skip ahead. Anyway, I left it cooking all day and then separated the meat tonight. I have the bones, skin, etc still cooking now to make chicken broth overnight.

Broth: Chicken carcass, including a lot of skin, all of the juices that cooked out of the chicken during the day, 2 small onions, a few cloves of garlic, 2 or 3 carrots, 2 or 3 stalks of celery, 2 or 3 bay leaves, 8ish cups of water and 4 boullion cubes (maybe it's cheating but I like the saltiness). I let it cook for a long time, if it's too watery I add more spices, or if it's too salty I add more water.). Tomorrow I'll strain out the solids, throw away skin & bones, and I blend the veggies in a food processor and pour it back into the broth to add depth.

In other news, Maya hasn't been sleeping well lately so we've asked her to move out: